


Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus

by Annfan



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Angst, Catholic Imagery, Christian Character, Drug Use, F/M, Kate Fuller centric, Prayer, mexican honeymoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 17:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15690126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annfan/pseuds/Annfan
Summary: Kate may not feel God anymore, but she still falls to her knees at the altar. She may not feel God anymore, but she still believes.





	Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus

It’s nearly midnight when Kate slips out of the motel room. It’s much too late for a young girl to be walking the streets alone in Mexico. It’s way past her old curfew, she thinks grimly. There’s no one left to enforce a curfew, her father is dead and the man stretched out on the motel bed is too far lost in a haze of drugs to realize she is leaving. 

 

A large, mean looking stray dog sniffs around the dumpster at the edge of the street and her heart rabbit-thumps in her chest. She wonders numbly if it can smell the blood that leaks from the jagged cuts in her soul. If Richie had seen her seeping in blood before she must be drenched in it now.

 

The church is small and empty expect for the small flickering flames of votive candles. She wonders how many of the prayers of those who lit them have been answered. Does God answer prayers any more? Are these people’s pleas ignored? Or is Kate the only one who has been forsaken?

 

This church is so different from the one she used to sit in every Sunday. It is deep and dark and rich. The scent of frequently burned incense hangs in the air and the altar is gold and ornate. The crucifix is metal and marble and Christ looks up into the sky at a God she can’t see and can no longer feel.

 

“What does it feel like, to know that you belong?” She had asked a wicked man in a sinful place.

 

“It feels like home,” he had said and she had yearned to feel the calm she had seen in those unnerving eyes of his.

 

She had asked him to let her go, and pressed her lips up against his in a kiss that would have been chaste and sweet if it had been with anyone else in any other place.

 

She had asked him to let her go and she could still imagine a home to go back to.

 

Home. Warm fuzzy blankets and her mother’s smile. Hot pancakes and wrestling with Scott for the remote. A different, wooden cross on a plainer wall. Her Daddy’s hand in hers while they asked the Lord to bless their food.

 

Home. Home was now in a bottle of prescription pills and a crumpled mess of metal and glass on the side of a Texas highway. Home was in a pile of ash in the bowels of an unholy temple. Home was in yellow eyes and animal sharp teeth and the terrible iron scent of blood.

 

Home had been lost long before she had smoked a cigarette with the devil in a three piece suit. Home had been gone long before then but she just hadn’t realized it yet.

 

Kate may not feel God anymore, but she still falls to her knees at the altar. She may not feel God anymore, but she still believes. She believes with every bit of her bleeding broken, pure soul.

 

She thinks maybe she should pray for forgiveness. Forgiveness for sordid touches and the dangerous want Seth Gecko stirs up inside her. Forgiveness for the way his hand lingers in places it shouldn’t or his hot whiskey breath whispers against her ear in too small motel beds. Forgiveness for the way she feels such warmth and saftey and belonging in the rough hands of a man who’s shed innocent blood.

 

She thinks maybe she should pray for forgiveness but she doesn’t. Maybe she would have in a different life, a life where she felt shame for stolen kisses in the back of a church.

 

Maybe Kate should wish Seth Gecko damned for the things he did to her and her family, for the hell he dragged them to.But the Bible says to forgive and Kate has always been a forgiving person.

 

There was a time when she thought Seth was an evil man, when he had sharp words and a deadly gun aimed at the people she loved. Things are different now though, there is much greater evil in the world than all the sins of the man she shares a bed with.

 

Kate closes her eyes and folds her hands and prays, not for herself, but for the man who is the only thing she has left. She prays for him because she knows he doesn’t know how to pray for himself. She prays for the brother that he is so lost without. She prays for the monster that was her own brother, that still is her brother, no matter what. She prays for them all because she wants to believe that even fallen angels can find grace again.

 

When she is finished praying she slips a coin into the offering box, hears it clink as it falls in with all the other tributes, and then lights a candle. She watches it flicker for a while, dancing with all the hopes and sorrows of the parishioners of Monterey and then turns and walks back into the dark street.

 

She hears a few whistles from drunk men hovering outside brightly lit bars as she makes her way back to the motel. Neon lights flicker from 24 hour stores and she hears the steady strum of dance music from a distant discoteca. Her mind is calm though, quiet despite the lively noise of the still awake city. She feels a peace that she knows won’t last long, but when it finally dissipates there will be another church, in another strange city, and she will pray again.

 

When she gets back Seth is still on the bed, curled around a pillow, lost in a place that she can’t go. He shifts, barely, when she closes the door and makes her way over to him.

 

“Katie?” He says, voice hoarse, as she brushes her hand over his face, lets her thumb graze over his cheekbone.

 

“Yeah, it’s me,” she says softly.

 

Seth doesn’t know how to be soft, he’s all sharp edges, rough words, and bloody knuckles, so she has to be soft enough for the both of them.

 

“Kate,” he says again, and it sounds reverential, the closest to a prayer that Seth Gecko has ever come.

 

He pulls her closer to him and she nuzzles into his warm chest and hears the beating of his heart as he slips back into the only peace he knows how to find.


End file.
